Toby Hagon

2013 Car of the Year

A family sedan imported from Japan has edged out two locally-produced large cars to take Drive’s annual Car of the Year title for 2013.

The sub-$35,000 Mazda6 Sport beat Holden’s much-hyped new VF Commodore and Toyota’s first locally-produced hybrid, the Camry, to take out the coveted award ahead of 27 other rivals covering a $250,000 price range.

Car of the year: Mazda6.

Imported cars also won the other 12 categories in the annual consumer awards for new or updated models.

It is the first time since the awards started that an Australian-made car has not won one of the 13 categories that cover everything from small cars and SUVs to luxury cars and performance vehicles.

The new VF Commodore arrived in showrooms mid-year touted as "the most advanced car ever produced in Australia". The new model undoubtedly raised the bar for the former sales darling, offering unprecedented technology and panache, but its V6 engine can't match more frugal four-cylinders, something that cost it marks during testing.

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While imported cars have always dominated the Drive Car of the Year awards – in line with a buyer shift away from locally-produced vehicles - Australian-made cars have always registered somewhere among the winners, with the Holden Commodore Ute, Toyota Camry Hybrid and Ford Territory among the winners over eight years of awards.

It comes in a year when Toyota and Holden announced hundreds more redundancies and Ford announced it would shut its local production facilities after almost 100 years, pouring pressure on Toyota and Holden to commit to long term local production. Debate has since raged about extensive government support to the industry and whether taxpayers should commit hundreds of millions of dollar to propping up production facilities.

Sales of Australian-made cars are also under increasing pressure and this year could drop below 10 per cent market share for the first time. In 2012 12.6 per cent of the 1.1 million cars sold in Australia were produced locally, but for the first 10 months of this year that market share has dropped to just 10.1 per cent despite modest 2.6 per cent growth across the new-car market.

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However the Mazda6 that won is Best Family Car category and the overall Drive Car of the Year award was praised for its frugal new four-cylinder engine that features an innovative capacitor to store electricity normally lost as heat during braking and use it to power ancillaries such as lights and audio systems. It is also one of a handful of more affordable models to boast a stop-start system that can temporarily shut the engine down when the car is stationary.

Of the 13 category winner eight were carried over from the 2012 awards, with judges deeming no new model as being better than the previous victor.

For the first time the awards featured two hybrids as category winners – the Lexus IS300h and Mercedes-Benz E300 Bluetec Hybrid taking out the Best Luxury Car Under $80,000 and Best Luxury Car Over $80,000 categories respectively.

Porsche’s Cayman sports car also edged out HSV’s brutal GTS, which with a supercharged V8 engine is the fastest, most powerful car ever produced in Australia.